As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been taking Helen Mirren's online acting class at Masterclass.com and it's something I recommend. If you're looking for advice in any career field, get it from someone who is highly successful at it. Mirren has won the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom. She knows her craft.
One bit I found particularly useful is her advice on how to recognize a good starring or supporting role. You should already be able to recognize a good script. If you know a century of film inside and out, and you should, your ear will tell you if the dialogue works and the story is compelling.
But is the role for which you're being considered a good one? Mirren has a formula:
1. If you're offered the full script to read, look first to see if your character is in the last scene and what your character does. If your character is important to that scene, as opposed to just hanging out or tossing a line, it's probably a very good part.
2. If it's not in the last scene, find the last scene in which your character appears and assess the power of that scene and how far it is from the end.
3. If your character has no impact in the last scene in which it appears, if it just disappears, then it's not a good role and there is no point in reading the full script.
4. If the character has an impact at the end, or an impact at the point where it exits the film, then read the script through from the beginning, knowing that it hardly matters how often your character appears in the film, because you know it's is going to play a pivotal role in the story. Think of Robert Duvall's "Boo" Radley in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. Duvall, who had already appeared off-Broadway and on television, didn't even have a line, but it was a powerful role - his first in film - and he knew it.
I've really been enjoying this online class, because it presents the kind of practical information that I haven't seen since I took Geoffrey Soffer's Workshop in Washington, DC, ten years ago (see the link to my featured post at right). Actors are always learning, and this has been time well spent.
